Java applets were one of the first and most visible ways that this was attempted. The user experience of applets was atrocious. Starting up the applet runtime

Java applets were one of the first and most visible ways that this was attempted. The user experience of applets was atrocious. Starting up the applet runtime browser plugin at the time would cause the whole system to stutter and stall for several seconds. I'm not sure if it was the single core architecture of the time, but I recall that the entire system would lock up while this was happening. I think that this single fact caused a lot of damage to the reputation of java in the general public.